Mosier Twin tunnel hike

We went on our first official family hike of the summer a few days ago. It's something I had read about and have been wanting to go for a while now. The trail itself turned out to be paved the entire way which was cool. The trail takes you through two old tunnels that used to be part of the historic Columbia River Highway back in the fifties, they've been restored and are now used for hiking. Although the trail goes for 8 1/2 miles round trip, but we only did 7 miles round-trip. It was a

beautiful day and we enjoyed the views.

America

The 4th of July was low-key. We hung around the house, watched movies and basically just chilled until time to see fireworks.

16 yrs. Old

Yesterday, we celebrated Trevor's 16th birthday!  It's hard to believe he's that old already. We suprised him with a family trip to Top Golf in the morning. We all had a great time. We ordered drinks and appetizers while we played. Afterwards, we went to Great Harvest to pick up some sandwiches. After that, I took the boys to the recycling center (something they've recently started). They made over $32.00.  We had pasta with sausage for dinner and then opened presents. Trevor got his traditional birthday pie for dessert. It was a good day.  We sure love this kid!  It's been a rough year. We've had some difficult times with him, but Trevor is really trying hard and doing a lot better now.

Crater Lake camping trip

Our friends asked us about a month ago if we'd like to go camping with them at Crater Lake. Since Patrick won't be able to join the kids and I on our road trip

Later this summer, we thought this would be a fun family getaway.

We headed out early Saturday morning. We met up with our friends at a campsite called Broken Arrow (just outside of Crater Lake). It was a fun time. We will say though, instead of staying 3 nights, we only stayed 2 because the mosquitoes were horrible! We've never camped somewhere where we've had such a problem. We all got so bit up. We tried bug spray and candles with no luck. To treat our bites, we tried creams and sprays, even toothpaste! We all took Benadryl at night to help with the horrible ichiness.   Spiders we're bad too. That part was really terrible.
Crater Lake was amazingly beautiful. The water was so blue! Pictures don't come close to doing it justice.  Unfortunately not all of the park was opened yet (due to snow still). We were able to see a portion of the park. It was crazy how much snow was still up there.   We had fun, and enjoyed visiting with our friends and some

friends of theirs they brought along.  It's definitely different camping with people that you're not super close to. I had my moments, ha!  Overall, glad we went. In the way home, we stopped to play in a river for a bit, and also had a late lunch at a super cute old fashioned Soda Fountain. Both well deserved! We can check Crater Lake off our Oregon bucket list now.

Very overdue update on life in Portland

I have had tons of problems with blogger,  so I just gave up keeping up with this.  Now, almost seven months have passed since I've been able to log in. A lot has happened, but I don't feel like trying to recapture all of that so I'm just going to start from where we are right now. I'll do a little recap with no pictures of the events.
December- we celebrated Christmas which was nice. Savannah got a cat for Christmas she named him Oliver.
January-we celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary. We had a major snowstorm that dropped nearly 10 inches of snow!
February- Trevor got his driver's permit.
March- Our cat Oliver, started getting sick and losing control of his back legs. We took a spring break trip to Seattle which was wonderful. We ended up having to put the cat down, which was incredibly sad. Savannah celebrated her 12th birthday with a hiking party which was fun and messy!
April- Griffin ran in track.
May-  Patrick flew to California for his Uncle Dave's memorial service. We took a trip up to Washington for our friend Dave's retirement from the Navy it was a good, fun weekend. Celebrated Mother's Day at the beach which was wonderful.
June- We went to the Rose City fair. Griffin went to the Shakespeare Festival in Ashland. Savannah had a choir concert. Griffin got second place in a speech and debate tournament. Griffin was in a Shakespeare play.  We celebrated both Patrick's birthday and Father's Day on the same day. We went out to eat, went to the zoo and went to the movies and saw Cars 3. It was a great day. The kids finished up school. I finished up work.

That's kind of where we are now I'll do my best to kind of updating this. To be honest, I haven't really missed it. I do know though, if I don't keep blogging I'll kick myself down the road someday so, I'll try. Life here is going well. Looking forward to starting house hunting in the next few months, finally.